Race in the 1968 Academy Awards
At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Bahamian-American actor Sidney Poitier became Hollywood’s first major black star, having become the first black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1964 and the top box office star in 1968. In the year 1967, he starred in three critically acclaimed and financially successful films: To Sir, With Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, all of which dealt with the topics of race and race relations in the United States. The latter two each received numerous nominations and awards at the 40th Academy Awards in 1968; however, despite Poitier’s critical and financial success, his name was unceremoniously left out of the 1968 academy award nominations.
In the Heat of the Night was a film that starred Poitier as a black police detective from Philadelphia who works with a white Mississippi sheriff, played by Rod Steiger, to solve a murder investigation. In the Heat of the Night received seven Academy Awards nominations and five wins, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. In the Heat of the Night was significant for its portrayal of Poitier’s character Detective Virgil Tibbs as not only the equal to his white partner, but as a major figure of authority at a time where race relations in America were incredibly turbulent. An especially infamous scene from the film was when, after being slapped by a white prisoner, Tibbs smacked him back, as the image of having a black man in a position of power over a white man, at the peak of the civil rights movement, was both powerful and controversial.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner starred Poitier as Dr. John Wade Prentice Jr., a successful black doctor engaged to a younger, white woman, played by Katharine Houghton. In the film, his fiance introduces him to her parents, who are “liberal, progressive” people that “preached racial equality to her but had never thought about the practical implications of their daughter truly accepting and acting on the racial equality beliefs that they had instilled in her” (Irwin, 26). While this may not sound groundbreaking today, this was a huge step forward in cinema as it was one of the first positive depictions of an interracial marriage in film, as well as one of the first kisses between a black man and a white woman. Additionally, this film was released right on the heels of Loving V. Virginia, the Supreme Court case which ruled state bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional. The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won two, those being Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay.
While the films Poitier starred in were clearly critical darlings, having accrued a cumulative seventeen nominations and seven wins, he was denied the recognition he deserved by the 1968 Academy Awards; despite this, it’s clear how much of an impact his films made on both the Awards and American culture in general that year.
Works Cited
Hibberd, James. “The Year SIDNEY POITIER Wasn’t Nominated.” Entertainment Weekly, no. 1503/1504, 23 Feb. 2018, pp. 52–55. EBSCOhost, dbsearch.fredonia.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=128059521&site=ehost-live.
IRWIN, DEMETRIA. “50Th Anniversary of ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’.” New York Amsterdam News, vol. 108, no. 6, 09 Feb. 2017, pp. 21–26. EBSCOhost, dbsearch.fredonia.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=121279856&site=ehost-live.
“The 40th Academy Awards | 1968.” Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1968.
“Top Ten Money Making Stars.” Top Ten Money Making Stars — Poll Results, web.archive.org/web/20130114130743/http://www.quigleypublishing.com/MPalmanac/Top10/Top10_lists.html.
